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UPDATE: This is LaV will be getting together on Sunday, December 12th at 4:00 p.m. at Mixed Grill Gyros, 5118 Murfreesboro Road. The restaurant is very pleased that we will be there, so please come one and all!

Who wants to get together for an informal meet & greet (slash) Christmas (slash) holiday celebration? It’s been a couple of years since we’ve done one … It would be a great time for our elected officials to also show up informally and have the opportunity to talk to constituents. Face to face. And nice.

Anyone in? I’m thinking a Sunday afternoon – this Sunday is a good possibility. Where?

First, I would like to thank the 12ish people who came to the meeting tonight. Your input was extremely valuable and we appreciate all of you. Let’s talk a bit about the process we used to come up with an endorsement. We listed each candidate and discussed pros and cons of each person. We listed all we could think of, including some silly ones like one person’s con: “Doesn’t give away Twinkies.” There was also a lot of discussing of fonts that each candidate used for their signs. It was revealed that I am a font snob.

After we had discussed each candidate in every category, we then voted by a show of hands as to who the site should endorse. For the mayoral candidates, each person was allowed one vote. For the alderman candidates, each person was allowed three votes, since it was decided the site would like to endorse three candidates.

So, let’s get to the endorsing.

Mayor:

We spent quite some time discussing the three candidates for mayor. Each person has some great qualities about them. But there can be only one winner, and that winner was….

Senna Mosley

Some of the things that were mentioned about Senna were some of the really great things she did during the flood for the people of La Vergne. Many people who were there had a Senna-worked-tirelessly-during-the-flood story. Personally, at Old Timer’s Day I had a couple of different people tell me that Senna had been really good about checking up on them both during the flood and afterward.

Another thing people are very impressed with is that Senna is very accessible. She answers her cell phone and talks to the people who call. If she doesn’t answer when you call, she calls back very quickly. She answers questions on the site and is good about returning email.

She has great knowledge of the inner workings of the city, and does research things so she can form her own opinion. She is excited to lead the city in a new direction, and appears to be inexhaustible. Everyone who is friends with her states she is a really good friend.

So, kudos, Senna! You have a lot of very enthusiastic supporters.

I don’t want to leave the other two candidates out in the cold. Many positive things were said about both Ronnie Erwin and Mike Slinker. Everyone agreed that Ronnie is very likable. He’s a good guy. We’d like to have him on our bowling team, or we’d like to hang out with him and drink iced tea. But the general opinion was that Ronnie’s had 4 years as mayor of La Vergne, and not all that much has changed. Mike Slinker, well, people say he is very likable, and he has a good public image. There were some very major concerns about Mike’s campaign financial disclosure, however. It claims he has less than a thousand dollars into this election (both real money spent, like on signs and publications and “in kind”- including things like, the donated limo he used in the OTD parade) and therefore doesn’t have to provide an itemized campaign disclosure form. Those numbers seem a little off to many of the people who were at the meeting tonight.

Alderman:

Like I said ^ up there, we decided to endorse three people, and each person had three votes. Again, we spent quite some time discussing the candidates, and the three winners were:

Tom BroekerChris FarmerEarl Wilson

(That’s in alphabetical order.)

Tom had some great supporters there, and there were other people there who didn’t know him personally, but liked his answers to the TiLV questionnaire and liked what they had heard about him otherwise. Some of the things people liked was that he presents a very professional image- something La Vergne could certainly use. He has management experience through the ball league and also through- crap, I didn’t write down the exacts, but he’s some kind of…union rep? (Tom, comment and let me know what, exactly, and I’ll fix this bit.) People who know him well said he is an absolute rock in a crisis situation. It was also thought he would be a great advocate for parks and rec.

Now, Chris, we found to be extremely well-informed, especially about public safety issues and our ISO rating. It is clear that he is willing to put in the time to really research an issue before making a decision. We think he is very approachable and intelligent. We also like the fact that, since he is a paramedic, he has the flexibility to be able to make a quick decision and is compassionate toward people. People also really liked his answers to our questionnaire. Really, the overwhelming theme tonight from the people who came out- not Kathy or me- that the questionnaire was pivotal in influencing people’s votes.

One person who really, really stood out on the questionnaire answers was Earl Wilson. People really felt like his answers were well thought out. Someone said they especially liked his answers because he used the common vernacular (heh, that’s my words. I think their words were “he was plain-spoken”). People really like it that he’s running because of his sons, to make this a city they’d like to stay in. And everyone that met Earl thought he was extremely likable. It was mentioned that he appears to be a very good listener.

We liked the other Alderman candidates, we did. One candidate I’d like to mention is Kandy Pierce, we liked her quite a bit. Kathy and I think that with a stronger mayor and stronger Board of Aldermen, she would really be able to do amazing things on the Beer Board. We hope, if she doesn’t happen to win for Alderman, that she would run again.

Again, we thank everyone for coming out tonight. We’d like to thank the Noodle House for providing tasty food and great service.

Congratulations to LaVergne’s own No More Fortune Cookies who will have her work exhibited in this art show. Scheduled a week from today from 7pm – 2am at The Open Lot in Nashville. Who wants to go? I may be able to talk my husband into it if he reads the “poster” closely.

The February Middle Tennessee Blogger and Podcaster Group Meeting will be held at 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 23rd at Espresso Joe’s in Smyrna, TN. On the agenda will be Podcamp, which I recently attended. We will also discuss the newly created blog at mtbpg.wordpress.com.

I’m looking forward to seeing each and everyone of you and returning to our unscripted, unedited podcasting. I recommend adults only attend.